


Harmony brings Chaos

by LemonHead2221



Category: Kirby (Video Games)
Genre: Amazing Mirror, Battleship Halberd, Chaos, DMK has voices in his head, I believe I didn't take the concept from anything but I could be wrong, I don't think there's anybody else who stuffed Wiz into a fic ngl, Mirror Land, Ok there's too many tags enjoy your reading, Peppermint Palace, Twin Mirrors, dream land, harmonic chaos, lord this is long, that's what I named the two mirrors Dark Mind uses yes, you'll see what that means
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:42:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26675344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemonHead2221/pseuds/LemonHead2221
Summary: Dark Meta Knight wakes up to discover that Mirror Land is peaceful once again. The lack of balance between it and Dream Land could be the end of both worlds.Alternatively: have you ever thought about why the Nova Dark Meta Knight has the Mirror Ability in Star Allies?
Relationships: Dark Meta Knight & Shadow Kirby
Kudos: 40





	Harmony brings Chaos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MonarchNachure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonarchNachure/gifts).



> Thanks, Moon, for giving me a short prompt that became this monster of a fic.

“Dak!”

For the first time in his entire life, Dark Meta Knight was not horrendously disturbed by that pesky mispronunciation of his name. In fact, he was almost… relieved, in a way.

The small child hugged his arm. Dark allowed him to stay like that for a few seconds before shoving him away. The knight touched his own mask, arms and feet. There wasn’t a single crack to be found.

He looked up. The sky was a disgustingly beautiful tone of blue, with a few soft white clouds floating around. The land beneath it was green and lively, with fields of painfully colorful flowers at the distance. The wind was annoyingly mild and fresh and blew deliciously against his wings.

Where was he? Where were the furious stormy skies, the dark and dangerous plains and the fustigating wind of his home? He looked back at Shadow, who had that unmistakable glow of futile happiness in his eyes.

The knight was suddenly struck by the horrifying realization that he couldn’t feel Dark Mind’s presence. His mind felt empty and his thoughts too free to be comfortable. What happened to his master? Had he… had he died during the fight?

“Shadow, where is Dark Mind?”

Shadow blinked once, then shook his head.

Dark Meta Knight stared at nothing for a while. He was alone? He was… free? What purpose would he have if not to serve Dark Mind? Dark felt his blood getting cold. There was too much space in his head for only one person. It was torturously empty and silent and he couldn’t see anything that wasn’t coming from his own eyes nor hear anything other than what his ears caught. Nova, even the absence of a separate line of thought was off putting. Would he have to live like that now? If Dark Mind was dead… No, he wasn’t dead, that was impossible. Dark Mind couldn’t be dead, he would be back soon to talk to the knight, he probably just hadn’t noticed his creation was awake. That’s right, he would be back soon.

A low growl came from his right. Shadow was still staring at him.

“Are you… hungry?” he asked him. Shadow nodded.

“ _ Get him food _ ”, Dark heard.

The familiar voice made him be taken by absolute relief.

“Master?” he said out loud. “Where are you? What happened?”

Silence. Dark frowned, but did not insist. If Dark Mind wasn’t talking to him, there was a good reason for it. He turned his eyes to Shadow Kirby, who was patiently looking back at him, then back at the foul landscape. Only once Dark had seen those vivid, disgusting peaceful sights. That was Dream Land, his Original’s home. That meant somewhere in the clouds above him was the Amazing Mirror, the portal to his own home. If Dark remembered well, it was located somewhere above the small village the ruler of that kingdom inhabited.

With a signal from Dark, Shadow hopped on his head. The knight spread his wings and impulsed them both into the air. First, find food.

They hadn’t flown for an entire minute when Dark spotted a tree with many red shapes, which looked like apples when they approached, hanging from it. Dark worried for a moment about the possibility of those being actually poisonous fruits, but discarded the thought. In what possible realm did their species get poisoned from food?

Shadow ate fifteen apples while Dark tried to call Dark Mind’s attention again. Would he order them to return? Maybe take their Originals’ place, lower the kingdom’s defences and wait for his return?

“ _ Protect him _ ”, the knight heard. Only that and nothing more.

He looked at Shadow, who was patiently sitting on the ground. Dark Mind had created both of them for the sole purpose of helping them take Dream Land. The place was still disturbingly peaceful and didn’t have his omnipresence, so he had probably failed, but if he was still giving them orders, did it mean he was going to try again?

Dark’s thoughts were not answered, which annoyed him enormously.

“Stay here”, he said to Shadow and flew up to have a better vision of the field around. The tip of what he supposed was a tall building could be seen to the south. Judging from the position of the sun, they should have three or four hours until night fell. That should be enough. Dark went back to the ground to pick up Shadow, then took off towards the building.

Flying was always much faster and easier than walking, however maybe it was the fact he had been resurrected mere minutes ago, maybe it was the hits he had taken before that, but Dark’s wings started aching like Nova knows what after the first hour of flight. They stopped for a few minutes and continued, but the second time he didn’t last thirty minutes. Dark landed sloppily, practically falling from a height of two meters. Shadow rolled on the grass, stood up and quickly ran back to him. Dark was grasping at the forearm of his wings, struggling against the pain that was making his eyes tear up.

“Poyo?”

“I’m fine!” Dark yelled at him. Shadow stepped back, then turned around and ran away. The knight focused back on his wing. It felt like each joint was on fire, the pain pulsating on the rhythm of his heartbeats. He needed to put them inside of water, but while flying he had seen that the nearest lake or river that was not in Dream Land was farther from his current position than that one.

Something poked his feet. Dark opened his eyes to see Shadow carrying a large red fruit that was nearly his size.

“Meito!” the child said.

Dark took the fruit. It had a large “M” imprinted on it.

“A Maxim Tomato?” he asked. Shadow nodded. Dark had seen those before, but never had the opportunity to try one. They were supposed to heal every and any injury. Without thinking twice, the knight pushed his mask up and swallowed the tomato. The result was nearly instantaneous; the pain vanished, leaving behind a wonderful feeling of freshness. “Where did you get this?”

“Poy-poyo poyo.”

Dark stared at him for a second.

“Yeah, I shouldn’t have asked. Come on, we have to leave.”

“Poyopoyo!” Shadow pointed at Dark’s wing, then at himself.

“You, weighing me down? You weigh nearly nothing. Hurry up, I don’t have all day.”

Shadow hopped onto his head again, although a little hesitantly this time, and Dark Meta Knight took off once more.

  


They arrived when the sun was disappearing behind the mountains. Despite the ground being already in the dark, the sky was still lit enough for them to see the clouds. Or the lack of them. But that was to be expected. The Amazing Mirror was so high above that the clouds it rested upon looked blue for anyone looking at them from below, so an apparently clear sky was nothing to worry about. Dark and Shadow flew up, spiraling with the help of hot air, until the town down below was nothing more than a spot on the grass. They looked around. Weird, the Mirror was nowhere to be seen. They flew higher. Still nothing. Higher. Nothing. They were so high now that Dark’s own body was a little slow from the rarefied air.

“Can you see the Mirror from here?” he asked, panting from the effort of flapping his wings in such a thin atmosphere.

“Poy…” Shadow answered, out of breath.

That was odd. Dark lost enough height to take a better look at the town. Maybe that wasn’t Dream Land, but another useless kingdom in Popstar? No, that flashy castle was unmistakable, that was the right place.

But then where was the Amazing Mirror?

“I’ll go to the castle… maybe they took it there after they realized anyone could go through it”, Dark said to Shadow after pushing him behind a bush. “Stay here. Wait for me and don’t leave for anything, okay?” Shadow nodded.

A normal person wouldn’t fly straight to the castle, he imagined. Nova damn it, he had to go through the town. The knight made the gray tones reflected by his body turn into blues, goldens and purples. He took his time making sure that the colors looked natural under the sunset sky, but couldn’t get the slash over his left eye to disappear. He shrugged. Apart from his Original and Kirby, nobody else in that world knew there was another one of their beloved knight with a slash on their mask, anyway. One last look at himself and he walked towards the town.

Nobody looked at the knight as he made his way through the streets. Actually, they would even turn around to avoid looking at him. Dark couldn’t avoid frowning a little under his mask. Dream Landers loved his Original. Had they seen through his disguise? Had they found out he was an impostor?

He saw a projectile coming towards him and quickly blocked it with his hand. A heavy and pointy rock bounced off his glove and fell on the floor. Dark looked up to see who had thrown that, a burning sensation of disgust arising from his stomach, his eyes starting to glow red.

“Crap, he saw us! Run!”, a voice yelled before some figures went missing from the knight’s peripheral vision.

He spread his wings and flew above the houses. Three children were running away in a narrow street. Dark passed them and hid on a roof a few blocks ahead, invisible against the dark sky. When the loud steps approached, he jumped to the middle of the street and kicked one of the fugitives to the floor. The boy let out a surprised yell and was about to stand back up when a shiny purple shoe stepped on his chest and forced him to stay on the ground. The other two ran away.

“Not so brave now, are you?” Dark growled.

“Ow! And they still say you play fair!”

“I didn’t know that throwing rocks at people when they aren’t looking at you was considered ‘playing fair’.” The knight pointed his sword, now looking like the sacred sword Galaxia, at the kid.

“Dark Mind wasn’t enough for you and now you’re killing defenseless children too?!” He cried in terror.

What in Nova’s name was that brat talking about?

“I did not kill Dark Mind” Dark hissed, having to control himself to not stick the sword into the kid’s throat.

The boy’s eyes peeked at the golden-looking blade. “What do you want with Mirror Land? Isn’t it enough to turn it into a copy of that pathetic little world of yours?”

Dark blinked. He looked again at the way too peaceful night sky and the green hills, now darker without sunlight.

“This… this is Mirror Land?”

“Duh.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Swear to Nova. Wasn’t this what you Dream Landers wanted, after all?”

Dark’s coloration slowly reverted to their normal gray, his sword becoming a flat, spikeless silver blade.

“I’m not Meta Knight”, he said, stepping back.

The boy stood up.

“Whatever”, he said and also walked back, staring at the sword. “You were Dark Mind’s puppet, right? Dark Meta Knight?”

Puppet.

“That’s… mostly right.” Dark sheathed his sword before he stabbed the kid with it. “Who rules Mirror Land now?”

“There’s only waddle dees living in the castle.”

“So nobody.”

The boy shrugged and nodded: “Nobody.”

“Is there an authority figure I can talk to?”

“Nope. Why?”

Dark Meta Knight flew back to the bush Shadow was waiting behind. A bunch of fainted waddle dees and broken spears was piled up next to a tree not too far from there. Shadow pointed at the floor when he saw the knight, as if saying “see? I stayed”.

“We may have a problem, let’s go”, Dark said more to himself than to the child who was observing him. Shadow tilted his head.

“Poyo?”

“This is apparently Mirror Land. If that’s true, then both this and the original worlds have their days numbered. Are you coming or do you want me to leave you here?”

  


The guy who decided that waddle dees were appropriate guards for anything deserved two things: one was having his brain studied. The other was Dark’s gratitude. Walking into the castle and forcing the meek servants to obey him would have been laughably easy if it hadn’t been pathetic. Merely holding the hilt of his sword had bought their entry. The dees and one doo lived alone there and they were so happy to have company that anything Dark asked was instantly provided. He even wondered about telling one of them to jump off the window at one point, but discarded the thought.

While Shadow was in the kitchen annoying the cooks, Dark convinced Captain Waddle Doo to let them stay for the night. He asked him several times if he was sure that was really the Mirror Dream Land, but received a “yes, sir” every time.

Dark refused to have dinner with the others and dragged Shadow and a cart of food into a room, but he was still full from the Maxim Tomato and ended up letting the child eat everything by himself. Shadow slept almost immediately after that, but Dark could barely close his eyes, so he went for a walk around the flashy colorful castle.

Dark Mind still hadn’t said anything else. Not even a brief thought. Dark had grown so used to the constant presence thinking in his head that the silence of his head, amplified by the lonely echo of his footsteps through corridors was nearly maddening, as if he had lost a wall to lean against. It wasn’t a good feeling, but the worst was the lack of a confirmation to his suspicions.

Dark Mind could filter the thoughts he didn’t want the knight to listen to, however sometimes he would let something slip. A feeling, a worry, sometimes even a full piece of memory. With time, Dark had put some of those together and that way he learned the truth behind the corruption of his home world, the reason for Dark Mind’s tyranny.

When the Original world was born, in order for reality to remain balanced and stable, an anti-world needed to be created. That was Mirror Land. However, in the beginning the two were so similar that it only made things even worse. Before they were annihilated, Dark Mind “corrupted” Mirror Land, replacing peace with danger and dreams with nightmares. That not only saved both worlds, but also made sure they balanced each other.

That is, until he decided to take over Dream Land as well. The knight remembered Dark Mind’s beliefs that the Original world was becoming too chaotic and violent. He had hoped to put an end to that and rule over the two worlds to make sure there would be worlds to rule. But now that he was defeated, there was no one to do that.

Dark looked outside. The moon in Dream Land was a permanent crescent, but here it was always full. Before, it would cast an eerie and lonely light on the hills around the castle, but now it was calm and disturbingly relaxing. He wondered how long reality could last like that.

He eventually found himself in the throne hall. There wasn’t a single grain of dust on the seat at the end of the room. Were the waddle dees expecting someone to come and take it? If nobody had done it so far, it was unlikely they would come now. Would they wait forever?

“Sir, is there any problem?”

Dark looked at Captain Waddle Doo.

“Who is going to be the next king?”

The Captain looked at the throne, then back at the knight.

“Uh… nobody, I think.”

“Didn’t anyone try to take the title?”

“Not after Dark Mind was killed.” Dark’s eye twitched. He contained the urge to yell that his master was  _ not _ dead. “Since that happened, everybody seems more… humble, I think. People aren’t greedy anymore.”

Dark Meta Knight could become king. If it was that easy, then why not? He could watch the end of the worlds as a king. And since Dark Mind would never recover his power on time to save them anyway…

“ _ Don’t you dare. _ ”

Dark shivered. “I’m sorry, master”, he thought. Dark Mind didn’t reply.

The knight continued his walk through the castle, a feeling of annoyance at the sound of his own metallic shoes against the stone floor sinking into him with each step. He opened doors and entered rooms, trying to find something to distract him from his brutal boredom and emptiness, but ended up going back to his room instead. Shadow was drooling on a pillow when he arrived. Dark walked to the window and sat on the sill. Down there, in the town, which was actually much larger than Dream Land, most of the citizens were sleeping, but the ones that weren’t were chatting and laughing out loud. Nobody was arguing, nor trying to kill each other. That laziness and the unnecessity of looking out for oneself wasn’t life. It couldn’t be. Wherever he looked, the absolute peace had an utter feeling of wrongness to it that made Dark’s mouth curl in disgust. His home land was supposed to be one that forced you to fight in order to survive, not that ridiculous comfort zone.

Dark looked back at Shadow. At least the child wouldn’t grow in that damned place. He didn’t know what was worse.

“ _ Protect him _ ”, Dark Mind said.

Dark got down from the window sill quietly. Was there something in the castle to kill them?

“ _ Protect him _ ”, Dark Mind repeated.

“From what?”, the knight whispered.

“ _ Protect him! _ ”

Something clicked in Dark’s head. How would he protect Shadow if the world ended?

“Is this what you mean, master?” Silence. “Isn’t there any other way?”

“ _ No. _ ”

Dark Meta Knight rolled his eyes.

“Raaaah,  _ fine _ , I’ll save the world, then.”

Shadow blinked.

“Poyo?”

“Go back to sleep.” The child immediately closed his eyes and started drooling again.

  


They left as soon as the sun rose, and only not before because Shadow was still not fully awake and Dark Meta Knight worried he would fall mid-flight.

Dark had spent the night thinking about how in the name of Nova he, out of all people, would be able to save not one, but  _ two _ worlds, and got to the conclusion that he needed a magical artifact powerful enough to corrupt at least the whole planet. There was only one creature in that side of the Mirror who he knew had any idea of what that artifact could be.

It took them half the day and several impossibly long stops for Shadow to eat to get to Peppermint Palace. The child jumped to the floor as soon as Dark landed on the ice surface, but looked back when the knight didn’t follow him to the door. Dark was stretching and massaging his wing, an expression of annoyance invisible under his mask.

“Poyo?”

“It’s nothing, they are just a little stiff.”

“Poy…?”

“I said it’s nothing.” Dark pushed Shadow towards the door. “Stop asking.”

Against the blue ice glowing under the sunlight, a large black tophat could be easily spotted on a corner of the room. Without thinking twice, Dark walked to the hat and kicked it. It bounced on the wall and fell back on the floor.

“Ow! Why did you do that?” Wiz complained. Two yellow eyes opened in the dark to find the tip of the knight’s sword pointing at them. “Hey, hey, put that away, someone could get hurt!”

“Someone  _ will _ get hurt if you don’t answer my question” Dark said menacingly.

A pair of disembodied hands appeared, holding a magic wand. The wand was spun once and a red cape unfurled behind it.

“Ok, ok, I’m here, calm down.”

“I’m looking for an artifact.”

Wiz somehow got a puzzled expression.

“I’m a magician, not an expert in historical artifacts.” Dark lifted his sword. The floating hands raised in an attempt to protect their owner. “Ok, ok, I know a few, don’t hurt me! Which one are you looking for?” Dark blinked. He hadn’t thought past the “threaten him until he speaks” part. Wiz seemed to notice his confusion and continued: “Alright, what do you need it for?”

“To save the world.”

“Um, From what?”

Dark sighed in annoyance. Did he  _ really _ have to explain?

“Instability from peacefulness.”

Wiz’s eyes squinted.

“You want to corrupt the world.”

“I don’t really want to, but we all take orders from someone.”

“I don’t. And I’m not telling you.” Dark’s sword pinned one of the magician’s hands to the floor. The magic wand fell and rolled away. “Ok! Ok! I’m telling! I’m telling! Please don’t hurt me! You want Dark Mind’s Twin Mirrors!”

“Dak!” Shadow poked Dark’s wing, but was kicked back by a red shoe.

“His mirrors were broken.”

“They were shattered. Broken artifacts lose their power, but artifacts that shatter can be fixed and used again. They are extremely rare in the Original world, but more common here. The Amazing Mirror is an example.”

“Poyo!”

“Wrap it up.”

“The Twin Mirrors are what Dark Mind used to corrupt Mirror Land. The source of his powers. If you find them, you might be able to do it too.”

“Where are the Twin Mirrors?”

“Poyo!”

“With Dark Mind.”

The knight observed the magician for a second. Did Wiz know that Dark Mind was alive? “Dark Mind is dead”, he tried him. The words burned in his tongue.

“Then the mirrors are where he left them. That if nobody took them away.”

“Poyo! Poyoy poy!”

Dark Meta knight looked at the child.

“What? Who took them?”

“Dede.”

The knight let out a frustrated yell as his sword slashed the air and a large beam opened a hole on the floor. He spread his wings and practically threw Shadow on his head.

“You’re welcome”, Wiz muttered from inside his tophat as the two visitors fled from Peppermint Palace.

  


They rummaged through the arena-like structure where Dark Mind had been defeated until the sun set once again, but found no traces of the Twin Mirrors. So Shadow was right, Dark thought as his eyes slowly moved towards the large golden mirror floating above the arena. He would have to go to Dream Land after all.

The knight turned to Shadow Kirby to tell him to stay there until he came back, but one look at the disappearing sun made him think twice. Mirror Land could be peaceful again, but that didn’t mean leaving a baby of any species outdoors was an intelligent action. He, then, took Shadow with him into the Mirror.

The room they appeared in had little light apart from Dark’s faint glowing eyes. He used his sword to reflect the little bit of moonlight that entered through a rectangular window and find a door. The outside was lit enough for Dark to find himself in a long corridor just like the ones in Castle Dedede from Mirror Land, but flipped horizontally. So it had been moved from the clouds along with the Twin Mirrors.

An unnervingly loud sound of metal against metal was coming from the throne room. The king should be there. Dark Meta Knight remembered Dark Mind saying that the king of Dream Land was a fat and dumb guy who had enough raw strenght to put an anvil in orbit, so the conventional means of getting information were not going to work there. Dark made his colors shift to his Original’s once again before slowly opening the door.

The large blue bird was sitting on his throne, his head supported by an arm on the seat. A large TV on the wall was displaying a fight between robots, the origin of the sound, the light looking eerie and lonely on the walls. The floor around him was filled with crumbs and packets of chips. The corner of Dark’s mouth twitched in disgust when he noticed that last bit. What kind of king was that?

_ A kind of king who knows where the Amazing Mirror is _ , he heard. Dark cleaned his throat.

“Your majesty?”

“What?” the king replied.

“Sir, do you remember Mast-” Oh crap. “Dark Mind’s mirrors? The two ones that you brought here to Mi- Dream Land?” What was wrong with him that day?

“Yea, sure…”

“I would like to inspect them. You know, to make sure that they are clean.”  _ What the Nova, Dark _ ???

“Ya took it to the Halber’.”

Dark’s heartbeats got faster. “The what?”

“Halberd.” The king turned his head to look at the knight. Dark was glad the concentrated light casted the cracked left side of his mask in shadows. “Yer battleship, remember?”

“Oh, yes, of course! My battleship, the one that… flies… and is mine…” Dark wanted to slap himself. “Are you sure it’s there?”

“O’ course it is, I helped ya put it in there.” The king’s eyes narrowed “Ya feeling ok, Meta?”

“Y-yes, of course I am!”

“Ya sure? Yer lookin’ a lil pale.”

“Yes, absolutely fine! No problem at all!”

The Halberd. His Original’s battleship, probably filled with weapons of all kinds and radars that tracked each bug in a radius of kilometers. Come to think about it, that was probably how he was found when he was executing Dark Mind’s plan, in the first place. But now he had to get inside the ship without being noticed. The only way he could think of was… A portal. A plan started to form in his head during the few moments the large penguin stared at him.

“Your Majesty”, Dark started, putting a story together with a speed that only a professional liar could have, “I have been thinking if the Amazing Mirror is really safe here.”

“What, ya sayin’ my cute waddle dees aren’ able to keep nobody away from it?”

“Of course not, your Majesty. My concern is not keeping people from entering, but keeping them from  _ exiting _ the portal. After all”, he measured the next words carefully, “this was what started the whole problem with Ma- Dark Mind, isn’t it?”

The king scratched his beak.

“Yea, yer right… where d’ya wanna put it?”

“The Halberd.” Dark hoped he hadn’t mispronounced the name. “My crew” (he had a crew, right?) “can watch it at all times.”

“Aight”, the king said, turning his attention back to the TV. “We’ll put it there tomorrow.”

Now to find a way to make his Original’s send someone to get the Mirror, because  _ he  _ would most likely not be in position (nor in the right world) to do so.

“Sir, with all due respect, I will be very busy tomorrow, so I may forget about this. Could you please remind me to send someone tomorrow in the morning?”

“Yea sure. Anything else?”

The knight had to remember himself that he was on a mission to save Shadow to avoid laughing. That king was dumb like a door.

“No, sir, that is all.” Dark dashed out of the room making the least sound possible. “Well that was easy…” he sighed in relief. When had his improvisation skills gotten so bad?

“Poyo?” Shadow asked.

“Do you like battleships?” dark replied, completely ignoring the question. He headed to the room where the Amazing Mirror was stored.

“Poy?”

“Meiayaito!”

Dark froze in place, his colors briefly disappearing before he put them back. He hid Shadow behind him and turned around to see a smiley pink face running towards him.

“K-Kirby!”

“Poyo?” Shadow tried to peek from behind Dark, but was elbowed back in place by the joint of the knight’s wing.

“Meya-kyō! Poyoyo! Poyo, poyo!”

Dark looked around for anywhere to hide, but his great luck made it so that he was in a long empty corridor with no doors.

“Uh, yeah, sure, I’m here… I- I had to talk to the king… Why are you awake at this time, anyway?”

“Poyo poy…”

“Yes, that sucks… Look, I’m busy right now, so why don’t you go back to your room or home or wherever it is that you live and sleep? I’ll play with you tomorrow, promise!”

“Poyo!”

As Kirby hugged him (something Dark was absolutely  _ not _ fine with), Shadow tried once again to get a clear view of his Original, but the knight pushed him back once more. Kirby, unfortunately, noticed the movement. He started walking to the side to see what was there, but Dark imitated him, keeping himself between the gray and the pink children.

“Kirby, I think you should go to sleep”, Dark said, feeling a hint of panic taking his body.

“Poyo!”

“There is nothing here!”

Kirby, however, kept walking and they danced around in circles for a while. Then he stopped, staring at the knight with a “give-my-candy-back” kind of face.

Before Dark could do anything, Kirby jumped over him and landed on the other side. The child looked to the sides, then back at Dark with annoyance.

“I told you there wasn’t anything”, Dark said, his hands lifted in a fake apology. “Go back to sleep.” He suddenly had an idea: “If you do, I’ll give you a present tomorrow.”

That seemed to have some effect, because Kirby immediately hugged him and dashed away, probably to where he slept. Dark waited until his steps were inaudible before turning to the wall and dissipating the screen that covered Shadow with the exact color of the wall.

“Poyo.”

“Of course it worked.” That could be the only thing of the whole Mirror Ability that he could do, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t good at it. “Let’s get out of here before someone else finds us.”

They made their way into the room they had been transported to earlier. Analyzing it for the first time, Dark felt a slight touch of fury and indignation when he realized the relic was covered in dust and stuffed among trash and cardboard boxes. If that was the respect Dream Landers had towards the Mirror, then Dark Mind was right in wanting to take their pitiful little world.

“Poyo poyo?”

“They will put the Amazing Mirror together with the Twin Mirrors tomorrow morning, leaving us right next to them. We’re coming back in twelve hours.”

Shadow hopped in and Dark went a second later, having to dive down and catch the child before he slammed the ground with his face. Dark lended Shadow his cape and waited until he wrapped it around himself and immediately fell asleep, leaning against one of the pillars of the arena-like structure. The knight realized Shadow hadn’t slept all day, which for a baby that young was a very long time.

“‘Baby’. As if you yourself hadn’t been created mere weeks ago”, Dark mumbled to himself before flapping his wings and flying into the night sky.

He spiraled around the arena, going higher with each loop, looking for any potential danger on the ground, but there didn’t seem to be any hint of animal life as far as his eyes could see. He dove and drew an arc under the clouds, spinning when he got to the highest point of the other side. He couldn’t remember ever having the freedom or the time to fly like that in his long couple months of existence. He wondered if his Original flew like that often.

Dark took a break on the top of a pillar, massaging his wings. They were still stiff, but that was probably just a random inconvenient cramp. They would feel better if he used them more.

He looked at Shadow. Despite his absolute loyalty to Dark Mind, Dark couldn’t help but question himself about the real motive behind his order of protecting the child. Since he was created, Shadow’s purpose was to distract his Original and try to keep the intruders out of Mirror Land, but he then helped them defeat Dark Mind. Or maybe that wasn’t the actual reason. Dark Mind could very well have omitted his real intentions from the knight, mainly if it was something he could interfere with.

Protect him, was the order. He clearly wanted Shadow alive. Maybe it was because of the immense power his Original had. It should be that. Dark Meta Knight knew that, if the host of a power too great was destroyed, that power could go out of control and cause an explosion large enough to swallow an entire solar system, maybe more. But there was also a way for another to absorb that energy. Was Dark Mind afraid that his dark knight would take that power to himself and attempt to overthrow him?

Dark felt a sudden indignation bubbling inside of him, but quickly suppressed the feeling. His master ruled the world, he would be a fool if he didn’t worry about treason. The knight tried to hear any thoughts from his master, but all he could feel was a tip of satisfaction that he knew was not coming from himself.

As the stars crossed the sky above his head and the sun rose, Dark would sometimes check on the Mirror, trying to see if there was any movement on the other side, but all he could see was a faint rectangle of light that moved up on the wall as the moon in Dream Land lowered until it disappeared. He tried to sleep a few times, but between the muscles of his wings, which just got worse as time went by, and the knowledge that something could be waiting to eat Shadow he didn’t manage to keep his eyes closed for long enough. With Dark Mind also not saying anything else, flying was the only thing keeping him safe from death by boredom.

It wasn’t without a cost, though. When Shadow woke up, halfway through the morning, Dark was grasping at the aching wing muscle with so much strength that the area around his hand was a lighter tone of blue from lack of blood.

“Poyo…”

“How many times do I have to say I’m fine?” Dark took his cape from Shadow. When he put it on its place the cape morphed into his wings. That was one of the only things his Original’s Dimensional Cape did that Dark Mind had been able to put in that one, but Nova, was it useful.

Shadow insisted so much that Dark agreed on going back to the ground to look for another Maxim Tomato just to make him quiet. Before going, Dark took another look into the Amazing Mirror. The fact that it still showed that storage room, much more visible with the sunlight, made him slightly anxious, but he dismissed the feeling and flew down from the cloud. The child had to float the last hundred meters to the ground on his own while Dark Meta Knight tried to get out of the river he fell into because his wings gave up on working properly.

They looked for almost an hour, but could only find normal tomatoes, grapes and cherries. Dark ate some of them to calm his stomach down and let Shadow keep the rest. It didn’t make his wings much better, but at least he wasn’t hungry anymore.

Dark leaned against a tree, sighing. He looked up at the cloud and wondered if the Mirror had already been moved. Would the king really remember about it? Would Dark’s Original agree on keeping it? Would he see through the plan?

Those thoughts were shoved out of his brain when Shadow poked him.

“Poyo?”

“No, my wings are not broken.”

“Poy?”

“No, I did not hurt them anywhere.”

“Poyoy…?”

“Shadow, it’s fine.”

“Dak!”

Dark instinctively stood up at the sudden tone of command that resembled Dark Mind’s so much.

“What?”

“Poyo! Poyo poyo poyoy po poyo!”

Dark stared at the child. Never before had Shadow spoken so much in one day.

“Look, I can still fly.”

“Poyo.”

“So what if I fell? It happened  _ once _ .”

“Too.”

“Fine, twice. It’s just a cramp, it’ll stop soon, stop worrying so much about it.”

“Poy?”

“Because you’re annoying me, that’s why. Just calm down, ok? I’m fine.”

Shadow didn’t look convinced, but he walked back to his place, sat on the floor and started trying to pick up a ladybug from the grass. Dark looked away from him. Nobody had ever shown so much concern towards him. And he had just found out it was irritating. Shadow needed to be taken care of, but he could take care of himself. If he couldn’t, what use would he have for Dark Mind?

  


Meta Knight was still very confused when Mace and Axe returned to the Halberd, carrying the large mirror. In his conversation with King Dedede, the monarch had told him to send someone to the castle to pick up the relic as he, Meta, had asked him to do the previous night. Which was impossible, since Meta had stayed inside his beloved battleship for almost a week now. The king, however, had been very insistent on repeating that he had  _ yes _ talked to the knight, so Meta just decided Dedede had dreamt about it. The reason why was a mystery. Regardless, the Amazing Mirror was under his protection now.

After leading Mace and Axe to the room assigned to store the portal, Meta Knight returned to his office. Almost immediately after he sat on his chair, Sailor Dee barged into the room.

“Sir! Blade Knight is asking you to go to the Control Center! He says it’s an emergency!”

Meta Knight followed the hurrying dee to the Control Center, where a very anxious Blade Knight awaited.

“Sir”, he greeted.

“What is the emergency?” Meta went straight to the point. Blade waved at the large screen he was standing in front of. “What in Nova’s name…?”

The screen was showing signals received by the radar, or at least it should be. Around the center, where the marking of the Halberd was, there was a circle of scattered dots that appeared and then disappeared almost so fast that his eyes couldn’t see them. Meta instantaneously realized those weren’t normal signals, because instead of glowing white they were black.

“I turned off the sounds, they were driving me insane. I’ve never seen anything like this”, Blade said in amazement. “Do you think the radar is broken, sir?”

“No…” Meta waved at the computers. “Point the radio to the ground.”

Blade Knight picked up a pair of headphones, pressed some buttons on the control panel and played with the settings for a while. He shook his head and passed the headphones to Meta Knight.

“Static.” Meta checked and it was, indeed, static. But something was a little off about it, so he kept listening. After a few seconds, he gave the headphones back to Blade.

“There are two signals, one of them is the inverse of the other and they lag something between 50 and 60 degrees from each other.”

“Should I find the exact number?”

“No.” Meta tilted his head. “Find the distance between us and those signals.”

Blade changed some of the radar configurations.

“Sir, this… This is coming from the center of the planet! Do you think there is a device of some kind there?”

“Did you catch anything entering the planet before it started?”

“No, sir.” Meta Knight thought for a while, staring at the screen. “Sir, do you have any idea what that is?”

“A hunch. But it’s too unlikely. I’ll go back to my office and finish some reports. Please tell me if anything changes with that signal.”

“Yes, sir!”

Meta locked the door to his office when he walked in. The signal could be anything, but there was a memory on the back of his head that wouldn’t go back to its forgotten place. He remembered Nightmare talking about a special type of chaos he couldn’t emulate, one that was caused by peace instead of the lack of it. According to him, it could devour entire universes in a few days and once it started, it couldn’t be stopped.

The knight didn’t have any proof or even a hint that that was what was going on, but for some reason he couldn’t stop considering that “harmonic chaos” as a possible reason for the strange signal.

Forcing himself to ignore the subject for the time being, Meta Knight turned his attention to the stack of papers on his desk. That was going to be a long day.

  


Dark stepped out of the portal and hit the head of the knight wielding an axe standing next to it with the hilt of his sword. Once he made sure the knight had really fainted and Shadow had crossed the Mirror, Dark sheathed the sword and looked around. As he had seen from the other side, the new room was small and had walls made out of metal and round windows on one side. A faint sound of a motor could be heard coming from somewhere, along with a slight constant tremor that shook the floor, only strong enough to be noticed.

He had waited until nightfall so that the crew, or at least most of it, was already asleep. He didn’t believe they needed many guards, to begin with (that  _ was _ a huge battleship flying a thousand meters above the ground), but better safe than sorry. Dark looked at the Mirror and was very glad to see that it was cleaner this time. Apparently his Original knew the appropriate importance it had.

Dark peeked through the round window on the door. There wasn’t anyone outside. He opened the door, doing his best efforts to be quiet, and closed it when Shadow passed. He looked to both sides of the corridor.

“Poyo?” Shadow asked.

“Shh. I don’t know”, Dark whispered. “I thought they would put it together with the Twin Mirrors.”

“Poyo poyo.”

“As I said,  _ I don’t know _ . Let me think. If I were me, where would I put the enemy’s weapons?”

They went down the corridor, looking on each door for a sign of the Mirrors. On an intersection ahead, two knights were doing a patrol, but Dark and Shadow managed to sneak past them with a bit of light manipulation. A few doors ahead, the child’s quiet steps stopped. Dark looked back at him.

“Come on, we can’t stay here.”

“Poyo…” Shadow was looking at the ceiling. “Poyo.”

“They are… what? You can  _ feel the Twin Mirrors _ ?” Now that he thought about it, Dark also noticed a magical presence that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the environment, but it was so vague that he could easily forget about it. Shadow probably felt it more because he was more powerful. “I feel them too, but I can’t tell from where the energy is coming. Go ahead, I’ll follow you.”

Shadow started walking, constantly looking around. He entered an elevator that closed automatically, almost leaving Dark behind. It made very little sound from the inside, but the knight couldn’t push away the impression that it was much louder on the outside.

Shadow hopped off and started running as soon as the doors opened. Dark couldn’t fly after him to avoid making noise with his metallic shoes, so he went slower and more carefully. They went through a long corridor until the child stopped in front of a door and stared at it.

“Is it this one?” Dark asked, looking around for any guards. Shadow nodded.

Somewhere on another corridor to the left, a door closed and the sound of steps quickly approached them. Dark turned to the origin of the noise and had barely started imagining a screen of light in front of himself and Shadow when a waddle dee wearing a sailor hat appeared on the corner. His bouncy steps came to a halt as soon as he saw the knight.

Dark cleared his throat: “Good evening, little sailor waddle dee.”

“I just came from your office”, the waddle dee mumbled, stepping back. His eyes had a frightened expression. “And you were there. And t-there’s no way you could’ve gotten here before me.”

“Waddle dee…” Dark started, but the dee squeezed his eyes shut and yelled:

“IMPOSTOR!!!”

Dark jumped towards the waddle dee and slapped him with the flat side of the sword’s blade. The dee was thrown against the wall and fell on the floor, immobile, his scream echoing through the corridors. The damage had been done. The sound of rusty hinges broke the silence that followed. Dark and Shadow looked at each other, then the knight ran to the door and kicked it open.

There they were; glowing reflective hexagons with shiny golden frames, lying inside a glass box over a wooden table. They looked odd in comparison to the surroundings, almost as if it didn’t belong in that reality.

Dark didn’t see anything else, though, because on the next second something hit against the back of his head and he collapsed to the floor.

  


Meta Knight was tapping a finger on the control panel as Blade struggled to make the computer obey. In a matter of hours, that strange static coming from the center of Popstar had grown into a giant zone of interference as large as the planet itself that had driven the systems of the Halberd crazy. The communicators were a mess, the radars and the radio were beeping so much with mixed signals that they had to be turned off, the motors were dangerously close to failing, Kirby had just shown up and, to make things worse, his Mirror counterpart had invaded the battleship.

Blade Knight punched the panel in frustration.

“The weapons also don’t work. The entire system seems to have shut down, I have no idea how we are still in the air. Sir, what is happening?”

Meta Knight didn’t know what to reply. Not knowing something was a thing, but not knowing something that was scaring the entire crew was tearing him from the inside. He looked through a window. The surface of the planet seemed… wrong. It was the same, but distorted and confusing at the same time, as if reality was bending under their feet. Now Meta was almost sure he was dealing with the type of chaos he had thought about earlier. However it didn’t matter, since he didn’t know a thing about it other than the fact it existed.

“Have you ever heard of Harmonic Chaos, Blade?”

The knight looked at him in confusion. “Sir?”

“Chaos created from peace. Have you ever heard anything about that?”

“Not that I can remember, sir. But peace among what?” The question caught Meta off guard. He hadn’t thought about that part. Blade continued: “I know I read something about worlds needing an anti-world to balance them once, but I suppose it doesn’t have any relation to this.”

Something clicked on Meta’s mind.

“Maybe… Stay here and don’t let the Halberd fall. I’ll be right back.”

“Easier said than done…” Blade muttered, turning his attention back at the control panel.

Meta Knight quickly arrived at one of the few cells the Halberd had. They were almost never used, due to the lack of crew members that thought it was a good idea to challenge their captain, but they were always kept clean and functional just in case. That day it proved to be a good choice. Dark Meta Knight was curled up on a corner, grasping at his wings. Meta dismissed the knights on guard before turning to his living reflection.

“What happened to your wings?”

“Nothing.”

Because of the simple fact they were both equally proud of themselves and overly independent, Meta knew Dark had no idea what was going on with his wings and he would never admit it.

“You know something about the weirdness taking the planet, don’t you?”

Dark raised his head in surprise.

“How do  _ you _ know about it?”

“Long story”, Meta replied. “How do we fix it?” Dark did not reply. After ten seconds, Meta headed for the door. “If you’re not telling, I’m sure the child you brought along will.”

The bars of the cell were hit with so much strength that for a brief moment, both knights thought they would be torn out. Meta turned around and met a pair of glowing red eyes staring at him.

“Lay one single finger on him”, Dark said, his voice dripping with fury, “and I will kill your entire crew.”

“Then tell me what you know about that chaos.”

The gray knight snorted.

“It’s happening because Mirror Land is peaceful again, so there’s nothing to balance the existence of this world. All I know is that Master Dark Mind’s Twin Mirrors can stop it.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet, but if you take me to them I may find out something.”

“And what makes you think I trust you enough to do that?”

“The fact that you came to me for help, I guess.” Meta’s eyes flashed pink for a second. “Look, Mirror Land is also going to be destroyed if you don’t let me out of here. You apparently want to stop the world from being annihilated. I don’t have anywhere to go. We want the same thing.”

Meta Knight observed his living reflection for a few seconds, then pulled a key out of his Dimensional Cape and unlocked the cell.

“If you act suspiciously at any moment, I will lock you here again.”

“ _ Good luck with that _ ”, Dark thought, but remained in silence.

They had to go running because the dark knight could barely open his wings, let alone fly. The room where the Twin Mirrors were was inconveniently far from the cells. By the time they got there, the walls of the Halberd were starting to distort and they could hear a rumbling sound. Meta looked through one of the round windows and his stomach twisted. The surface of the planet didn’t only look confusing, it also seemed to be dissolving, leaving behind something that wasn’t exactly void nor a hole in space, it was just… nothing.

Sailor Dee showed up at the door, panting.

“Sir! Sword and Blade want to look for survivors on the ground! What should I tell them?!”

“I’ll go talk to them, wait just a minute.” Meta turned to Dark, who looked like he was having a panic attack. “Have you figured out what to do?”

“No, no I haven’t! I…!” Something clicked in his mind.  _ Of course _ ! Dark Mind had told him to protect Shadow because he was the only one who could use the Mirrors! “I need Shadow! He can do this!”

“Bring the child. Fast!” Meta said to Dee. “How do you know that?”, he added to Dark.

“Dark Mind. He has been telling me to protect Shadow since I woke up. He had corrupted the Mirror World because he knew about the need for balance. Now that he’s been defeated and hasn’t recovered yet, the worlds are collapsing.”

“Dark Mind is dead.”

Dark Meta Knight shook his head vehemently.

“He is not! He has been talking to me! How do you think I would get here without him?!” Meta raised an eyebrow under his mask, but didn’t say anything. “He wanted me to protect Shadow. That is my only mission!”

“Poyo!”

They looked at the door when both Kirbys walked in.

“Shadow!” Dark exclaimed in relief. “Hurry, take the Mirrors and reverse the instability!”

The child’s eyes went from the Twin Mirrors to the dark knight.

“Poyo.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have the power?! Why else would Dark Mind want you alive so much?! Do it, now!

“Poyo.”

Dark’s fists clenched, his eyes glowing red in wrath, but before he could do anything Meta put a hand on his pauldron.

“Dark, I don’t think he is lying.”

“He has to be!” the dark knight yelled. “If he isn’t, we are all dead!”

Meta looked at the children. Kirby seemed startled by the sudden loud voice, but Shadow didn’t even blink.

“The chaos is spreading from the center of the planet. If we go far away, that will buy us time to find a solution.”

Dark turned to his Original.

“We can’t ‘buy time’. This is also happening in Mirror Land, where the other side of the Amazing Mirror is. In minutes, it will be consumed and then there will be no turning back.”

“Well, then that will give us more time to live.” Meta Knight turned around and walked away, Kirby chasing him closely. At the door, the knight stopped and turned around: “We are going down to look for survivors. If you come, your help will be welcome.” He then disappeared in the corridor.

Dark considered going after him, but heard:

“ _ Don’t _ .”

He stepped back and looked back at the Twin Mirrors. If Shadow wasn’t going to take them… Dark unsheathed his sword and attacked the glass, scattering shards everywhere. Dark gave one of the Mirrors to Shadow and took the other.

“We have to get to Mirror Land! Come up!”

Shadow gave Dark’s wings a concerned look, but jumped on his head, holding the relic as best as he could. Somehow, despite the excruciating pain, Dark flew to the room where the Amazing Mirror was stored and into the portal.

If Dream Land was chaos, that was nothing compared to Mirror Land. The ground was nearly indistinguishable from the mess of nothing that was consuming it. The air itself had visible holes that grew larger with each passing second. There were people running towards the castle and the roof was crowded with waddle dees and people, all trying to stay as far away as possible from the floor.

“What do I do?” He whispered in panic. None of the voices were talking to him, the Twin Mirrors were perfectly still, reflecting the mess around. Dark Mind had used those Mirrors to corrupt the world, but nobody else knew exactly how he did that. Mirror Land was a reflection, a world that mirrored another. Dark had to reverse the properties of that world, turn reality upside down. But how?

Dark looked at the Mirrors. He had to control those artifacts. “I am your master now!”, he yelled. “Obey me!”

Nothing happened.

“I need you! The worlds are being destroyed! I can’t accomplish my mission without you!”

Still nothing. Dark punched the floor.

“COME ON, I DIDN’T DO ALL OF THIS FOR NOTHING! I HAVE ONE THING TO DO AND IT IS TO PROTECT THIS CHILD!!!”

His wings spasmed violently and he nearly yelled in pain. Shadow tried to run and help him, but couldn’t get close enough without being hit.

“HELP ME, IN NOVA’S NAME! I CAN’T… I DON’T WANT TO LET SHADOW DIE!!!”

A blinding light emanated from the Twin Mirrors, swallowing him completely. Dark opened his eyes, blinking to recover from his blurred vision. He was alone in a space so dark that he couldn’t see his own hands when he moved them. No matter where he looked, there wasn’t a single source of light.

**“Who do you obey?** ” A voice said, but it wasn’t Dark Mind’s. It was more mechanical and raspy and it echoed a lot before vanishing.

“Dark Mind.”

“ _ Good _ ”, Dark Mind said.

“ **Then you are not worthy of being my master** ”, the other voice said.

“Please.”

“ **Who do you obey?** ”

“ _ Say it. _ ”

“Dark Mind.”

“ **Then you cannot be my master.** ”

“Why not?!”

“ **That who obeys another has no free will nor power over oneself and is not worthy of having the power to change the world.** ”

“But I need that power!”

“ **Who do you obey?** ”

“ _ Dark Meta Knight, don’t you dare betray me! _ ”

Dark gulped.

“ _ DARK META KNIGHT…! _ ”

“Myself.”

“ _ I DEMAND YOU TAKE BACK THOSE WORDS!!! _ ”

“ **You still cannot have the power.** ”

“OH COME ON!” If he could see the origin of the voice, Dark would have punched it in the face. “I’m losing time here! The world is ending out there, wherever this is, and I NEED TO SAVE SHADOW!”

“ _ What you need is to obey my orders! TAKE BACK WHAT YOU JUST SAID! _ ”

“ **Dark Mind’s last words were “Dark Meta Knight shall never obtain the power of the Twin Mirrors”. Are you willing to disobey those words?** ”

Dark felt all the blood leave his face. So Dark Mind really did fear he would betray him.

“I…” Could he really? “ _ No. _ ” Dark Mind was his creator, his mentor, his master. “ _ You are loyal only to ME! _ ” “I…” The mere idea of speaking up against him was enough to make Dark want to skin his mouth in shame. “ _ As you should! _ ” Dark owed him his life and everything he had ever achieved. “ _ Refuse! _ ”

Shadow Kirby was waiting. Shadow had been by his side since he woke up. “ _ Don’t you dare! _ ” He had cared about him like nobody else before. Shadow was everything he had. His only family.

“ _ Dark Meta Knight, stop this RIGHT NOW! _ ”

For Shadow. He could do it for Shadow.

“ _ DARK META KNIGHT!!! _ ”

But as soon as he recovered his power, Dark Mind would chase and torture him until he died. “ _ You serve ME! _ ” Not only him: he would also go after Shadow. He couldn’t. “ _ You CAN’T! _ ” “I…”

Dark stopped. There was something strange. He couldn’t feel Dark Mind’s anger, even though his master was clearly angry. He couldn’t sense his thoughts of the pure hatred that emanated from him whenever he was angry. For some reason, all Dark could experience was a voice.

Then it hit him. Dark Mind wasn’t talking to him. That wasn’t his way of speaking nor was it his way of displaying anger.

Had Dark Meta Knight been talking to himself all along? Come to think about it, none of the things “Dark Mind” had said so far were unknown to him, unlike before, when a stream of new information was constantly forced into his brain, whether he liked it or not. That mental communication took such a small fraction of Dark Mind’s power that, if he was truly alive, even if weakened, he would be inside of Dark’s head all the time, just like before. And if that wasn’t happening, there was only one possibility:

Dark Mind was dead.

The Twin Mirrors were still waiting for his answer. Dark took a deep breath.

“I am.”

The black faded away, allowing him to see the Arena and the Amazing Mirror. The Twin Mirrors started glowing and were lifted in the air. They spun around each other, their shapes distorting and morphing into a long body of light. When the glow dissipated, Dark saw a silver sword with spikes floating in front of him.

“Galaxia?” He held the sword’s hilt and felt a sudden wave of energy run through his body like an electric shock. The floor around him was covered by a blanket of purple shadows that expanded through the entire arena and then disappeared, leaving behind ruins of the structure.

But they weren’t ruins, Dark noticed, his eyes flashing blue. That was how that arena was originally in the Mirror World.

He jumped off the clouds, flew as best and as fast as he could to the castle and circled it, slashing a circular line on the floor. Those same purple shadows emerged from the circle and spread in a radius of several meters. Then they vanished, revealing grayish grass and twisted trees with dark trunks and dead-looking leaves. Dark laughed out loud as the holes of emptiness vanished in that area. Now that was the real Mirror Land!

But there was still the whole planet to go. The knight looked at the sky, remembering the dense blanket of stormy clouds that existed there before. Dark took off with difficulty and, upon reaching a height he judged appropriate, started spinning, his new sword pointed up. The air started gathering around him, rotating in a powerful tornado and bringing humidity with the wind. A dark cloud formed around the tornado, growing larger and larger, each time faster, with the help of the sword’s power.

Dark Meta Knight slashed the air, dissipating the tornado. The cloud, now taking the entire sky, sent lightning everywhere and rain started falling to the ground, in the beginning just a drizzle that quickly grew into a furious storm. As the drops hit the floor, the distortion and the holes in reality started to disappear and Mirror Land regained its old, much better nightmarish appearance. Dark couldn’t stop a loud, relieved laugh from escaping his mouth when Shadow waved at him, his glowing eyes visible from a distance.

But was it just Dark’s impression or the child had a look of concern in his face?

When a wave of pain hit his body and his sight was filled with white dots, the knight remembered the lightning.

He felt the wind on his face as his mask slipped off and saw the floor approaching fast, too fast. He tried to fly away, hover or at least slow the fall, but his mind was slowly going numb and his wings burned more than he could ever remember them doing and felt unable to support his weight. No, he couldn’t fall! He didn’t want to die that way!

Dark looked up at the clouds, where Shadow was now a distant gray dot, before his vision went completely black.

  


Dark slowly opened his eyes to see a copper-colored surface above him. A mild light came from his right. He was lying in something soft and warm. His face was uncovered.

His face was uncovered. Dark sat up, looking around for his mask, but found only a waddle dee wearing a sailor hat at the door to the left.

“Oh, you’re awake!” The dee jumped in the air a few times. “I’ll go tell sir Meta Knight, he will be happy!”

Meta Knight? What did Meta Knight have to do with that?

Dark heard a low breathing sound in front of him. Shadow was sleeping at the tip of the bed he was in, hugging the slashed mask. The sight made the knight smile.

The sound of metal against the floor filled the room when his Original walked in. He dismissed the waddle dee and approached the bed.

“Good to see you are fine.”

The recent events came back to Dark all at once, giving him a mild headache.

“What happened after I fell?”

“When the destruction stopped, me and captain Vul went back to where I had left you and found a trail of blood leading to the Amazing Mirror.” Dark looked at his ungloved hand, where several small scars, almost invisible. He probably had hurt it when he broke the glass box. “We saw you being struck by lightning and managed to catch you before you hit the ground. You were in a very bad state, but there was only one thing the tomatoes couldn’t fix…” His eyes deviated to Dark’s wings, Dark’s own ones following them. The fingers of his wings were slightly crooked and the membranes between them were torn and burned. “You can still fly, but not as well as before. We also found out the pain you felt before was because your bones hadn’t still fully reformed since your shards were joined back together.”

“How long have I slept?”

“Three days.”

“Is everyone ok?”

“Yes. You stopped the chaos just in time.”

Dark smiled before realizing Meta could see him. The red marks on his cheeks became nearly brown. He reached for his mask, but his hand hit Shadow’s head instead.

“Dak!” Shadow yelled, and hugged him tightly.

“Hi, Shadow. Did you sleep well?”

“He hasn’t left this room since we brought you here. Not even Kirby managed to drag him out.” Meta seemed to remember something. “Oh, here! A way of thanking you for saving the world.” Dark looked at the short sheathe with a sword hilt coming out of it.

“Wait, clothing for my sword? That’s all I get? You’d be dead by now if it wasn’t for me.”

Meta’s eyes glowed pink.

“I tried to save the world once and got stuck in Mirror Land. You’re lucky you even got something.”

  


After eating the food Sailor Dee brought him (Dee was so happy to be there, despite Dark having knocked him out three days before, that the knight actually thought the food was poisoned), Dark took a walk around the Halberd. Through the crew, he learned that nobody except for them had any idea of how the chaos had started or even why it had stopped, something he was very grateful for. The last thing he needed was a bunch of random people considering him a hero for saving the universe, something they couldn’t even imagine how large was. He also discovered, completely by accident, that the swordified Twin Mirrors gave him the Mirror Ability, so now not only he could manipulate light, but he could also make clones of himself, deflect attacks and even extend his own attacks to cover a wider area, but he decided to check those again when there weren’t as many breakable devices around him. Another discovery, which wasn’t as cool, was the realization he was afraid of heights.

“How are you going to fly down from the mirror in Mirror Land?” Meta asked, seeing his living reflection stumble away from the window.

“Oh, yes, that’s the best part! Look what I can do!” With that, he opened the door to Meta’s room and jumped into the long mirror leaning against the wall. Dark poked the glass from the other side before returning. “I can use any mirror to go back! And apparently your bedroom leads to the castle, isn’t that great?”

Meta raised an eyebrow under his mask: “Wonderful.”

  


In Mirror Land, unlike Dream Land, the villagers had seen how Dark drove the chaos away and were treating him as a celebrity for saving their village. Dark didn’t mind that, though. They had seen him save their home right before their eyes. They had the right to treat him like that, so he allowed it.

The waddle dees and Captain Doo were so happy that they offered him the throne of the kingdom. Right when he was going to refuse, Dark remembered that, now that that world was back on being a nightmarish and dangerous place, anyone who decided to become some kind of dictator and enslave those people would do so. Dark, then, bowed and said:

“It will be an honor.” At that moment, Shadow managed to escape from the hands that tried to hug him. Dark waved at the castle and asked him: “So? What do you think of our new home?”

  


At night, while the child devoured the dinner the dees prepared for them, Dark retreated to a window and watched the movement outside. The wind was cold and violent once more, the hills and forests were threatening and scary and through the round hole in the clouds, above the Amazing Mirror, he could see the moon, which casted black shadows that painted the floor, hiding all evidence of any predator that could be waiting for its prey.

Captain Doo stopped next to him.

“I haven’t seen such a beautiful night in a while”, he commented. Dark nodded.

“Same.”

“Sir… pardon me for asking but…” the captain looked at the new king, who was patiently waiting for him to end the sentence. “You’re… you’re really staying, right? You won’t leave us, will you?”

Dark looked back outside.

“And turn my back on everyone who counts on me to keep them safe? Of course not. Were you really concerned about that?”

Captain Doo gave a relieved sound.

“I don’t mean to offend you, your majesty.”

“Not at all.” Dark’s eyes became blue for a second. “I’m actually quite enjoying living in a castle. So you don’t have to worry.”

The captain nodded.

“I hope you understand the burden this is. Our last kings were… unprepared, to say the least. But I have a good feeling about you!”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

Dark observed the Doo for a while, then turned back to the raging wind outside. Those people trusted in him to keep them alive and away from harm. He could be the only thing between them and total disaster.

Well, that was his kingdom now. And whoever tried to mess with it would have to face him first.

**Author's Note:**

> Lord this was long. I hope you enjoyed the reading! Please tell me your thoughts in the comments, I would love to read them!


End file.
